Ho Ho Ho
I submit the Eighteen Year Christmas Quilt. A sampler quilt I started in a class at Diane's Fabrics in Reno, NV (later Log Cabin Calicoes) in September, 1979. My teacher was Marilyn Fashbaugh who later purchased the store with her partner Joyce Ganser.
Taking the class with me was a gal named Rochelle Summers, whose daughter Kirsten was a week older than my daughter Kate (both were 18 months old at the time). We became good quilting buddies and were the first employees hired by Marilyn and Joyce when they took over the shop.
I began this quilt as a Christmas Quilt for Kate as suggested by an issue of Quilter's Newsletter Monthly, a special quilt to be brought out only at the Christmas season. I finished the top in good time and set it on my room sized frame to quilt, but then life kind of got in the way.
No sooner was the quilt in the frame than I discovered I was pregnant again. Time to hand piece and quilt a welcoming for my new son! Soon, having a toddler and a new baby really cut into the quilting time and I removed the quilt from the frame and continued to quilt it as time allowed.
Not even a year after my son's birth, his father and I divorced and I moved the kids back to Visalia, CA and quilting time became even more scarce as I went back to school and entered the work force. A second marriage, step-parenting, many baby quilts to be made for friends and family, another divorce, a remarriage (more on that later) and fast forward to 1997.
I finally finish the blinking quilt and present it to my daughter at my new mother-in-law's house on Christmas Eve. She is dumfounded and immediately snuggles under it on the sofa. I believe she's had it on her bed ever since.
The label for the quilt reads:
And I've been very slow, I know.
But I've been busy and feel no guilt;
For this, your eighteen year old quilt!
"Life is what happens when you are making other plans"- John Lennon
Made for Kate Aileen Gibson
With love by Jan Aileen Brackett Andrews
Septemer 1979 to December 1997
1 comment:
The quilt is beautiful.
Don't feel bad about the timetable. I have a plaster Woodlands Santa that I've been painting on for about 10 years now. I drag it out at Christmas time, paint a little, then pack it away until next year. My husband called it "the perpetual Santa."
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